June 13, 2024 • 35 mins
Let's dive into the inspiring journey of Tommy Phillips, a pioneer in the water sports industry. His story provides a glimpse into how boats, water sports, boards, and dealerships have changed since the 70s and 80s.
Tommy got to meet industry legends, face the challenges of running a dealership, and personally experience innovations that shaped modern water sports. Join us for an episode filled with history, humor, and valuable insights from one of the industry's most respected figures.
Stay tuned for episode three, where Mia Gee and Nick Ohrdorf will cover essential tips on trailering, hooking up, and backing up your boat. Until then, enjoy this deep dive into the world of Tommy Phillips!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What's up, guys? Welcome to episode two of the Portside Podcast. I'm your host, Mia G.
And today I'm going to be stepping back and you guys are going to be stepping
into an interview with a guy named Tommy Phillips.
Tommy has been in the industry since the 1980s when he started his ski shop,
Slalom Ski Shop, down in Florida, then expanded down to Colorado.
And it's honestly an amazing story of entrepreneurship.
(00:20):
And also you get to see a glimpse into how boats have changed,
how boards and brands have evolved.
And Tommy, Tommy's going to to fill you in. Meanwhile, I won't see you guys
until episode three, when we talk about trailering, hooking up,
backing up, all the good stuff.
So here we go. We have the man, the myth, the legend, Tommy Phillips here.
(00:41):
Well, I appreciate it, brother. Thank you very much. What an honor to be here with you today.
For again, those that don't know, Tommy's that the people know of now,
which is the, you know, 15 dealerships, I believe across the nation,
Tommy Phillips was the original
Tommy, and it was originally Tommy's Slalom Shop. Correct. And also a surf shop, correct?
(01:03):
Well, I'll back up just a little bit. I got my first ski, I think, in 63 or 64.
Herbo Bryan was my brother-in-law.
And, you know, we'd always been around the water, but mostly fishing and playing.
And I wanted to slalom ski.
And lo and behold, I got this incredible wood masterpiece from him and started
(01:25):
going to Great Vine Lake with my friend Larry Glover and started solemn skiing and just loved it.
Well, I sold two or three back then. You know, Buddy had seen me.
Well, hey, can you get me one of those? And then years.
This is about 1963, 64, back in that period.
So, you know, back when the Flintstones were boating. We hit another houseboat.
(01:48):
Okay, what happened? That landlubber tried to make a stop and turn when I'm sticking his hand.
And anyway, later on, I remember my sister telling me that, you know,
she made about $65,000 one year out of the garage.
And I'm thinking, man, I'm a guitar player.
I make $50 a night. This sounds pretty good. I think I'm going to order some
(02:13):
skis because Herb had just started HO.
He had sold O'Brien and I got a ski and I went down to Sloan's Lake,
and I sold it in about an hour and 10 minutes, and I made 50 bucks.
I got fed, I got to ski behind their boat, and I met a couple of real nice girls.
So I'm thinking, man, so I ordered another one, right?
And I went to Stanley Lake, and believe it or not, my second customer was Leif
(02:39):
Swenson, who ended up being the Malibu dealer and then the Mastercraft dealer
later in years, and I'll just leave it to you.
That. So that was kind of the beginning of Denver.
And then I think in two years, I was just about his largest dealer out of my house.
You know, I'm getting UPS trucks and I'm going to the lake and delivering them.
(03:01):
And I think I was two years into this and I made a decision.
I said, man, if I could do 5,000 bucks at the boat show, I'm going to rent me
a space and give this a try. Well, I feel like this is 81, 81. Yeah.
Or 80. No, maybe 83 by now. 83 by now.
I've been doing quite a bit of business out of the garage and they moved me
(03:27):
behind the taffy booth that the sport boat and travel show that was really a
pretty rough show back then.
All to say that, I got moved up to the aisles.
And lo and behold, I do $18,000 worth of business.
I got a new clutch. I got new tires.
I think I got insurance for my truck. I got all the stuff you couldn't get at 50 bucks a pop.
(03:52):
And so I got, and the address was 2520 North Sheridan Boulevard,
right around the corner from Sloan's Lake.
Well, a year goes by and the guy next door moves out. So we punched the wall out.
The next guy moves out, I punch another wall out.
And then I rent the upper end of the building.
And, you know, it's just mad chaos there. And I sold a couple of ski centurions
(04:16):
out of there. I knew those guys.
And they would sell me one boat at a time, you know, and I'd make like 400 bucks
on it. Boy, that's a lot of money back then.
And I said, I got to find a bigger place. I think I'm going to try boats.
And another miracle happened. Norm Speak, who I'd got to know,
he was the Mastercraft rep.
(04:36):
And he had a pretty good reputation.
And Herb always told me, he says, hey, you need to get to know Norm.
And he'll be a good mentor. So I got to know Norm and I just started following him around.
And he kind of adopted me as his other son.
He had a fabulous son, Steve, and daughter or Trudy that were amazing skiers.
(04:57):
Well, I was a complete idiot. You know, he had to teach me everything.
He had to teach me how to work on the boats and how to back them in right and
how to, you know, how to drive a straight line in the slalom course.
And I had a lot of that help. Well, Norm, one day he says, hey,
what do you think about being the Mastercraft dealer?
And I'll just, you know, I'll work for you and I'll sell the boats and everything.
(05:17):
And I said, wow. Wow. So this is summer of 1985.
We fly to Knoxville for the big Mastercraft meeting.
And I mean, everybody in the world there, every world champion skied for Mastercraft.
And at the time they had nothing.
Every world record behind this particular boat. Was it the, so these would be
(05:39):
the years of the Stars and Stripes?
Well, it was the year they transitioned out of the Stars and Stripes to the Swirl.
I'll never forget when they pulled that velvet, you know, cover off the boat.
Everybody went, what's this, you know? And they added a tri-star boat to it
too, you know, which is 18 feet closed bow, but it was wide and supposed to
(05:59):
go for the recreational market.
It wasn't received real well, but, you know, I bought one.
And I bought one Pro Star, and I was off and running again.
And we sold off of that, and I sold primarily to tournament skiers.
And up the street, there was a place called Coy's Wheel and Tire that was the perfect location.
(06:21):
I mean, they had a building, they had a fenced yard, they had everything there.
It was a mess, but I— It was Sheridan and Denver. Yeah, up there at 3740 North
Sheridan, right up the street.
So I went up there and I inquired. No, we don't want to sell it.
No, no, no, we don't want to rent it. We don't want, no, no, no, no, no.
Well, a year later, they come to me begging me. And I said, well,
(06:43):
I don't really have very much money. What do you guys want?
And they gave me a ridiculously good price, way better than I had offered them
before, by about 75 grand better, and said they'd carry the notes.
So, man, I'm in like Flynn.
They're carrying the note because my credit was Zip being a guitar player.
And I got that place and I got a bunch of guys.
(07:05):
There was this guy, J.D. Franek. Him and his dad and family went in there after
hours because we didn't have any permits.
And we just, you know, blocked out the windows and everything and pretended we were cleaning up.
Well, they redid the electrical, you know, and I got a bathroom put in all this stuff without permits.
So back when you could get away with those guys.
(07:25):
Never get away with it now. But anyway, that started growing.
And, you know, I have one cool part of this I should probably say is in 83,
I went to the Chicago Boat Show.
And, I mean, I didn't know anybody, man. I mean, you know, I was lost there.
But I'm walking around like a complete idiot.
(07:46):
And I'm pretty good at that. And I see this surf ski thing.
They had three of them. And they had brought this thing over from Australia.
And I said, man, I think that's pretty cool, you know.
And at the end of the show, I went in there and they still had three of them left.
I said, you know what, I'll buy two of those. And they shipped them to me and
(08:07):
I took them to Sloan's Lake.
And this guy, Dave Roberts, was the only guy that could get up on one.
And I sold him one and I kept the other one. Well, the next year I went back
to Chicago and Tony Finn was there with Surfer, Scurfer.
So I immediately jumped on it, you know, and out of the blue,
I was immediately the largest Scurfer dealer ever.
(08:30):
And the world. So this is, you know, for the listeners who maybe are new to
boating and different things, we'll talk about it in a minute.
Kind of the transition from water ski to wakeboard to now surfing.
Skirfer essentially was the first wakeboard. But if I remember right,
I was still very young at this point.
Skirfer, originally the idea was kind of to surf the wake behind the boat.
(08:55):
Yes. But then you guys started jumping week to week and started breaking a bunch
of boards. And tell us more about that.
Yeah, so that was the idea. Everybody wanted to surf behind the boat.
I mean, we tried it in 1964 at Great
Vine Lake because I had a nine-foot surfboard. And we went out there.
(09:16):
And I remember because the wax melted all over my buddy's boat.
And I was panicking because his dad didn't like me anyway. way.
So anyway, that's kind of how everybody wanted to surf.
So we started sitting on the scurfers and you couldn't do a lot on these things.
I mean, they were really hard to get up on and I demoed them and anybody that
(09:38):
wasn't really a good water person, waterman, they couldn't get up on it.
So it was starting to nosedive.
Well, in this process, I met Jimmy Redmond and I met him from a dealer in Texas
that knew him. He said, hey, this guy's got a way better board.
Once you call him and I called Jimmy up and I became a second dealer,
(09:59):
you know, and I ordered two.
I mean, I stepped up to the plate. I took that thing to Stanley Lake and this
guy, Butch Bendell, this hot shot snowboarder dude, he's a wild guy, man.
I mean, this guy, Bill jumps and jump really irresponsibly 100 feet in the air and things.
(10:19):
So he takes this thing out, and he immediately just rips this thing.
He's catching these whole errors and everything, but he puts his foot right through it.
Well, I didn't even— This is on Redmond's board? Yes. Or this is on the Skirfer's
board? This is Jimmy Redmond's new board.
But anyway, Jimmy says, I've got all this fixed and everything.
So I said, you know what? Once you come to the Denver Boat Show,
(10:41):
and I put Tony Finn on one end of the booth, and Jimmy Redmond on the other
because I was afraid they were going to kill each other because they're total
opposites. Jimmy is molecular structure of the sun.
And Tony is, you know, Tony is a salesman. We'll just keep it at that.
For the newer boaters, there are still many wakeboards, probably more from Liquid
(11:02):
Force at this point, that will still on the bottom of a wakeboard,
it'll say a Redmond design.
There's still many. I've got to verify that. I'm pretty sure many of them are
still designed by Jimmy.
Oh, Jimmy. Jimmy's still active, and he's an amazing human being.
And I was, so finally I said, well, I better break the ice with these two dudes.
And I felt like I was at a prize fight. I walked them both to the center of
(11:26):
the booth, said, hey, you guys, you know, Tony, this is Jimmy.
Jimmy, this is Tony. Now, I need you guys to get along, you know.
I know your competitors here. Well, they shook hands, and they walked off and
had lunch, and they were best buddies immediately.
And I'm going, wow, I never expected that. I figured Tony was going to be really
mad at me for bringing another guy into his, you know, his booth.
(11:48):
Anyway, they became buddies, and, you know, you know the story of that.
They did Wake Tech shortly after that.
And of course, Herb, to insert another piece of reality, Herb and I are on the
lift at Beaver Creek riding up snow skiing.
How come those surf skurfers don't sell real well, Tommy? And I said,
(12:09):
because nobody can get up on one.
And Herb goes, well, what if we made one like a ski and it was neutral buoyancy
and anybody could get up on one?
I said, yeah, if you could make one. And he had been making a few sky ski prototypes for Mike Murphy.
So he knew how to make the mold wider. And he went to this place, Beaver Machine.
(12:30):
And at Beaver, they designed the new one. And in this whole process,
you know, Eric Perez got involved.
I'd met him at the first Scurfer Worlds in Hawaii.
And I got on the phone. I said, Herb, I got the guy for you here.
This is the dude you need to know. He shapes, he knows all the shapers in Hawaii,
and he just won the tournament.
(12:51):
He can actually do a backflip on one.
So that's when we got the first compression molded one.
And as soon as I got that board, what's funny is I came to the Pueblo Boat Show.
You know, when it's out here at the state fair, they had to build that ramp,
you know, and you had to get your trailers and boats down there.
And I had a TV about this big that I could plug that that scurfer or not scurfer
(13:17):
tape, but hyperlite tape in.
And I sold like 45 boards.
I mean, to me, I'm making a fortune. Right.
And it just kept growing, Nick. So the thing is, is very few people belong to
a private lake like I'm privileged to own now.
So the slalom thing and competitive water skiing thing was just creeping.
(13:42):
It wasn't really growing at all where this new sport was going out the roof.
No time long, I had a few local tournaments.
I had the first one in 86 at Soda Lakes, which was really cool.
And Bob Jessen actually had the concession there.
We were kind of partners in it. And then the next year, Chuck Blood was awarded it.
(14:06):
But we had some success with those early tournaments.
And I called up Terry Dorner from Water Ski Magazine, one of the promoter guys,
the salespeople that worked for Terry Snow.
And I said, hey, man, you guys ought to think about this and put this on the
water ski tour because this is going to be the next big thing.
And that was probably a mistake. I should have kept that diamond.
(14:29):
But I gave it to them because the next thing I know, they're back in my backyard
wanting to charge me like three grand for a booth.
And I'm going, wait a minute. I gave you guys this idea.
Well, you know, I went over like a lead balloon. And that's how the whole tournament
thing kind of grew into its own.
Just a few days ago, I was gifted a t-shirt.
(14:49):
My friend Kendall Curtis here in town, you see his name on a rematch,
all these commercial buildings.
He brought me a t-shirt from the 1993 Worlds in Dallas.
We had it at Colorado Springs in 92.
And I had the show skiers and we had slalom skiers and we had the 92 worlds
(15:11):
and we had Eric Perez and Scott Harwood and all these guys from Kittering,
of course, Darren Shapiro who came and slayed everybody on it.
And this thing, the whiteboard deal's just going crazy.
All of a sudden you go to the boat show and 20% of the boats there had problems.
It had either pylons, the extended pylon, or the tower on it.
(15:35):
So that was really pretty cool watching all that.
And I remember the last time I went to a show, I saw you there.
I think every boat in the place had a tower on it, right?
I mean, have you seen anything advertised at the show that doesn't have a tower?
Even the pontoon boats nowadays, right? Yeah, everybody's getting in on it.
It's crazy how those things change from there. And again, for the,
(15:57):
you know, viewers who are just getting into the boating world and surf boats
and wake boats, like, you know, we started with those little water ski boats,
the Mastercrafts that are,
you know, really low slung, flat bottom boats designed for the private water.
The smallest wake you could get.
The smallest wake you could get. And the one that made no wake at all was the
Winter. That's the boat everybody wanted, right?
(16:18):
And then you progress, you talk about the Skirfer coming along and that progresses
to Wake Tech and Redman and Finn getting together.
Wakeboard thing comes you get it on the tour and
so when that started and i
don't remember the years maybe that was 92 in spring so
the first time wakeboarding was on the water ski tour well we
(16:39):
didn't have it in 92 93 to
my knowledge the tournament in dallas was
the first time yeah they they had put eric perez
the knee boarders and the white boarders
were doing an exhibition at the
tournament and we had those at it's soda lakes
(16:59):
tournaments when we had the pro tour there that which was
incredible a beautiful venue for it but that got halted because somebody parked
on a cactus and you know it was the end of the world for that but yeah so so
93 is the first time wakeboarding's part of it and at that point in time they're
still being towed behind a A water ski boat.
(17:20):
Water ski boat with no tower and no extended pole.
And I would challenge anybody who's still wakeboards at this point,
go ahead and go hook a rope to the back of your boat on the short pylon,
not on the tower, and go try to do a flip.
Yeah, it takes a lot of skill. A lot of skill, a lot of work.
You've got to be able to spin really fast.
So that's the original tour. Yes. And then the tower comes along.
(17:45):
Right. What do you remember about the tower? I remember that Nautique had the
first one. Nautique had the first one, and everybody kind of panicked. But you know what?
Nautique, you know, they're even better today. I have a lot of respect for that boat company.
They were kind enough to license it to everybody else.
They could have just kept it and buried everybody because nobody,
(18:08):
the pole would do this to the boat.
The tower had four points. The pylon came up first. Yeah.
So we took a ski pylon that was right in front of the direct drive motor.
And then a pylon went on top of that. Right.
And it has straps going all four corners of the boat.
That was the original that got you up and they realized they could flip easier
(18:30):
and wakeboarding was easier.
It's pulling you up when you jump, not pulling you down. The other one would
pull, you know, you're here and the pylon's here.
So this is the beginning. This is when water skiing kind of starts to become
the dinosaur. It's on its way out.
Wakeboarding is climbing fast. Then Nautique does the tower,
the flight control tower, patented as the original one.
(18:53):
And I believe, I don't remember the whole story, but did that not come from
somebody taking an old damaged tuna tower off of an ocean boat?
That's one of the rumors that I've heard.
And that makes a lot of sense because they're in Florida and they had a lot of crossover there.
And that's what I heard. It came off a fishing boat. They said,
hey, this works pretty well.
(19:14):
And when the tower happened, man, that was a beautiful time because all of a
sudden you had wrecks, you had biminis, you had all these things going on the
tower, you had aftermarket towers.
So a guy like me had a whole bunch more stuff to sell to make money on and service.
And the industry is just exploding.
(19:37):
I mean, sometime in there, your dad, the light went on with him.
He said, you know, I can sell motorcycles.
Nobody's really doing this stuff down here in Pueblo. I think I'm going to give it a crack, right?
Yeah, that was more of a, I think dad at that point was in the motorcycle business.
He had an offer to buy the motorcycle business out.
Didn't know if he wanted to or not, but decided to sell. And then I remember
(19:57):
being a young man and my take was always that we'll get dad on this podcast
at one time and get his story.
But I think he could only mow the lawn so many times in the summer.
So he needed something else to do. And that's when boats came along.
The odd thing about that was that we were a boating family. Mm-hmm.
And I can grow up at the lake every weekend. Right. Until we got a boat dealership.
(20:18):
Mm-hmm. And then now you work all the time. We stopped going to the lake.
But yeah, so those towers came along. That takes wakeboarding to the next level.
That takes accessories to the next level.
Now we're pushing in through mid, late 90s, early 2000s. And then tell us about
the rest of the progression.
Tell us where wakeboarding goes. Where does Tommy's go? Well.
(20:39):
You know, another cool story, if you roll the reel back, is we were all,
we had the first contest at Cottonwood Lake up in Brighton.
And I'm trying to figure the exact year on that.
It's back in the 80s. But that's when we formed the World Ski Boarding Association
(20:59):
first. And we used Jimmy Redmond's logo and everything, which became the World
Wakeboarding Association shortly after that.
And the reason it got changed from ski boarding to wakeboarding is Tony Finn
was involved with a company called Kransko.
And they had all the rights and they had, because he was working with them,
(21:22):
they had the rights to that name, ski boarding.
And so what was changed to wakeboarding? Todd Weatherill was the first president
elected, and Pat McElhenney's wife, Stacy.
And they merged with the tour, the WWA and the tour.
So they had a body of guys with some snowboard experience and surf experience,
(21:45):
skate experience, and they came up with the original format.
And that got changed, but all these things were kind of growing together.
And unfortunately for skiing instead
of the water skiers embracing this they got really really nasty and guys like
you and myself i just looked at extra opportunity you know i still did ski tournament
(22:10):
here at the lake we did ski we did wake we did barefoot anything you could do on the water.
Was part of the tournament. We didn't care. It was equal to us.
I love to watch barefooting and participate in it just as much as slalom or wakeboard.
But everything was growing and growing.
And as time went on, you know, all of a sudden the wakes were big enough.
(22:32):
And a few guys started getting some pretty nice surf rides behind the boats.
And I tell you, I think the surfing edition
has really fostered the
growth of the industry because you remember i
mean boats used to be 40 50 60
000 i mean i'm not even going to say what they are now because i don't know
(22:56):
i'm i'm completely out of it but it's a different world i remember you know
i came back to work for dad in 2010 and i remember you know working with bill
campbell for my dad at the time and And, you know, we're selling Moombas and Supras.
And, you know, 2010, you know, the top of the line Supra was $65,000.
(23:16):
And that was everything.
It was everything you can imagine. The nicest tower, the nicest speakers.
Yeah. The heaters, all the bells and whistles.
And I remember, and it didn't take long, but I remember in 2013,
I remember when we broke the $100,000 mark.
And I remember ordering one, like you said, ordering one and going,
how am I going to sell this?
Rob, what if they want it? It's going like, what am I going to do?
(23:38):
Like this is over a hundred thousand and now, you know, certain manufacturers
out there, not Tink, they build that beautiful paradigm. It's here. Yeah.
Paragon, excuse me, gorgeous boat. But it's over three.
I've just seen it. I'm afraid to get up in it, even with my shoes off.
I think they're over four at this point for one of those Paragons.
You've got many boats between the three and four range. Those Supras hanging out between 200 and 300.
(24:05):
Mumbas are 100 to 250.
So it's wild the way that's changed. But surfing has really opened the doors
to that. I remember, you know, us freshwater pirates out here in these big open
lakes, not these private little things that we've got.
You know, we would get up early. Just to get glass.
Just to get glass. You would be out to the water. If you weren't on the water
(24:26):
by 7 a.m., you were way behind.
Yeah. You know, and that's what we would do. And then when the water started
to get choppy, we would surf by enlisting the boat as far over as we could.
Turning slightly into it. Turning slightly into it. It wasn't much of a wakeboard,
but that's what we did when you couldn't wakeboard anymore.
And now wakeboarding is what you do when you get bored with surfing.
(24:48):
Yeah, that's right. Well, you know what, Nick?
Interesting enough is the wakes got bigger and bigger. I had a conversation
with a bunch of pro wakeboarders.
I believe it was about 2014, maybe 15, when the Tommies opened their store just
north of Orlando at that location.
(25:09):
I was down there and I said, guys, how do you train on these monster wakes?
And they said, we don't. It's survival.
We do a lot of stuff on the trampoline and we do all this other work, balance work.
And we go out and we try tricks a few times and some things we can make,
(25:31):
but we build our run on not getting hurt because every one of these guys has
had at every reconstructive surgery you can imagine.
And I think that's a big...
Shift, a paradigm shift is all of a sudden everybody was getting hurt wakeboarding.
Now, a lot of guys got hurt slalom skiing and barefooting, but the amount of
(25:53):
guys that were good, that were blowing out knees and getting hurt,
that was a big paradigm shift because you really don't get hurt surfing.
You got the professionals down in Orlando training on trampolines and just trying not to get hurt.
But on the video, it's so effortless And it looks so smooth that the guys back
home, they want to make a run at it.
(26:15):
No one realizes how hard that is and how much you could damage yourself.
And I think we kind of started to see wakeboarding taper off.
And again, surfing, you don't get hurt, which is great for the whole family.
Mom and dad can do it along with the son and daughter instead of dad buying
a boat so that his son can get a great wakeboard.
(26:35):
Do it on a paddleboard even. In fact, if I have a beginner, I stick them on
a 10-foot paddleboard and I pull them one mile an hour just to build their confidence.
And then it's a smaller paddleboard and then it's a surfboard.
And then all of a sudden, because they've built confidence, we teach them to surf.
But I tell you, another interesting paradigm shift I saw is a lot of the competitive skiers,
(27:01):
you know they would they would ski two maybe
three sets a day and they
were spread out because the slalom ski you have
to be physically warmed up and ready everything
has to be perfect the conditions have to be good the driver the weight of the
boat everything well when they get done they're still at the lake and all of
(27:23):
a sudden guys like t gas they're going out surfing for the rest They're all
out there playing and they got the music on and I always thought, man,
that is so interesting that these guys love it so much.
They'll go do this, but they will not wakeboard.
Six foot four trying to flip on the wakeboard is not always a good outcome.
(27:46):
You know, you big guys are better for big guy sports.
You know, most of the good wakeboarders were my size or a little bit bigger. They're squirts.
Quantified the reason I was never a great weight boarder. Tommy just gave me
permission to be a for the history of everybody that knows me out there.
My size is the reason I wasn't a good weight.
(28:07):
Well, you're in a physics play comes into it. It's just harder to turn this
over and over versus this.
I mean, it's just simple as that. So what do you, so you, what year did you
start Start Tommy's Salve Shop. 81.
81. And what year did you sell it? Sold it in 2012, September 11th. September 11th, 2012.
Yeah. And then tell me about the journey since selling it.
(28:31):
Well, I had some pretty serious health issues, Nick. Most of those are resolved now.
And I'm telling you, the stress is, I bet you know, I bet you go through it
too. It just wore me down because you'd never have a vacation if you're in the boating business.
You pretend you do, but if you leave the store, you're doing this all day and all night, right?
(28:56):
It's, well, how much does he want for the trade? Well, what happened?
You know, he took it out the first time and all this stuff happened or whatever.
And it just wore me down. And I said, you know what?
I got a pretty good piece of property here. I got the lake down in Pueblo.
Man, it's a good time to sell. all, but that process took me five years to find a buyer.
It was extremely difficult. The banks will not loan money on a boat dealership.
(29:25):
You got to find somebody with
pockets. And I learned that the hard way. I had several deals go south.
And every time a deal would go south, it would just crush me.
But finally, the good Lord put Mr.
Borish, Matt Borish, who bought my store and was very kind to me,
honored his work, shook my hand, looking in my eyes. In fact, we met.
(29:47):
I had five people looking at my dealership all the same day.
And when I met him and his father-in-law and a couple other guys he brought
with him. I said, man, that's the guys I want to sell the business to.
We met at the Mexican restaurant on I-70 as they were leaving town.
I got them on the phone and they were at Sheridan. I said, well, get off on Federal.
(30:09):
And I met him up there and we got a napkin and wrote the deal up on the napkin.
And he sent me his letter of intention exactly at 10 o'clock that night honoring his word.
And, you know, I held on and I did consulting for two or three years.
And that was a lot of fun because I got to go to all the grand openings and everything.
And that was pretty cool. But man, I really don't like getting on a lot of airplanes anymore.
(30:34):
So that kind of tapered off. And really, I don't think I have a lot to contribute
anymore to the boating industry.
I think most of my cards are played.
You know, maybe there's a little advice I could give or something,
but I think the good Lord has other things in mind for me and going through
the fire of owning your own business.
(30:58):
Business. It's really hard and really brutal.
But man, when you move through the fire, you become tempered steel because regular steel is brittle.
And I was brittle for a long time, but going through those fires.
And I think the greatest lesson I learned other than trust the Lord was the
(31:18):
ability to have a disaster in your business.
And that become the biggest blessing. Because I firmly believe,
my dad taught me that as a kid, and I didn't believe him as a son.
When something bad like this happens, you got to look on the other side of the door.
And I got to inhabit it instead of saying, Nick, well, why did this happen to
(31:40):
me? And how come I get all the bad breaks?
And why can't these boat manufacturers do this?
And why doesn't so-and-so think this? I started asking, how can I make my dealership
great? What about this disaster can I learn to become better than everybody else in the business?
So all of those disasters in solving those problems prepared me for the last chapter of my life.
(32:04):
And I think the last chapter, which is serving the Lord Jesus Christ, I get emotional.
That's the chapter I'm most excited because it goes on forever.
We're going to jump onto that podcast next, and that will be on the Faith in
the Fast Life podcast. I catch that story.
I want to touch on that note of you talking about being forged in the fire of
(32:25):
what the dealership goes through, the principle of the dealership and those things.
And I think the, the lesson here to the, to the listener is it's just how important
it is to not just the boat that you buy, but the, but.
Dealership you buy from bingo because at
the end of the day these boats are built by humans in the united states
of america and yes they're a premium dollar and when
(32:47):
you spend that much money sure we all wish that they were perfect that there
was never a problem but they're built by humans and they rattle on a trailer
down the road and they get plugged into the water and electronics are near water
and rough waters and rain and wind and whatever else and at the end of the day
sometimes Sometimes things go wrong,
but it's not if it's going to go wrong, it's when it's going to go wrong.
(33:09):
Yeah, it's got to go wrong.
The question is, who's going to take care of you when it does go wrong?
That's a fabulous question. And I think that's the strength of your dealership,
that it was the strength of mine.
I mean, I watched your dad in the motorcycle business.
I watched him look people in the eye and shake their hands.
I watched him make things right. And when you find a dealership like yours that
(33:33):
every single handshake,
the intent is to honor that word and keep that word and give them the experience they deserve.
It is far, far better to buy from somebody like you than finding your boat on some clearing shop.
You know, some guy that bought up somebody's inventory that went bankrupt or whatever.
(33:55):
I mean, I'm sure you get those boats in too. They come in in the shrink wrap.
Hey, I stole this thing at an auction and they
don't realize that it takes three or four hours on every single new boat of
just water testing and fixing and tweaking Every single thing that vibrates
(34:15):
loose whether it's coming from Tennessee or wherever those are long hard trips on on those.
Those semis and,
You know, you go out in Pueblo Reservoir and the wind that we're having today,
you got a real good chance of shaking something loose.
Well, if they can come to your dealership with people that have integrity and
(34:36):
really care, you guys are going to fix it.
You're going to fix it as quick as possible. It's going to be done right.
And you're going to follow up and say, hey, man, have you had it back out to
water? How's that vibration? Did we get it solved?
Great. Well, vibration's solved. But you know, this mirror keeps coming loose.
Hey we'll get you another mirror bracket or whatever the relationship
(34:57):
with your local dealer is worth
the extra 16 bucks it costs you for a boat or whatever you know you really don't
save anything by buying an auction boat right yeah and having a relationship
whether it's us or any other dealership you want a dealer who's going to take
care of you so it's important but Tommy,
(35:18):
I think our time frame here... We're winding down. We're winding down.
We had a great interview with you. I really appreciate you doing it.
Man, what an honor, Nick.
It's been an honor to watch you grow up under your dad's leadership and go through
your challenges. And I'm really proud of you, buddy.
Appreciate it. Thank you so much for being with us today. God bless you,
(35:38):
man. Yeah, thanks, brother.
What's up, guys? Welcome to episode two of the Portside Podcast. I'm your host, Mia G.
And today I'm going to be stepping back and you guys are going to be stepping
into an interview with a guy named Tommy Phillips.
Tommy has been in the industry since the 1980s when he started his ski shop,
Slalom Ski Shop, down in Florida, then expanded down to Colorado.
And it's honestly an amazing story of entrepreneurship.
(00:20):
And also you get to see a glimpse into how boats have changed,
how boards and brands have evolved.
And Tommy, Tommy's going to to fill you in. Meanwhile, I won't see you guys
until episode three, when we talk about trailering, hooking up,
backing up, all the good stuff.
So here we go. We have the man, the myth, the legend, Tommy Phillips here.
(00:41):
Well, I appreciate it, brother. Thank you very much. What an honor to be here with you today.
For again, those that don't know, Tommy's that the people know of now,
which is the, you know, 15 dealerships, I believe across the nation,
Tommy Phillips was the original
Tommy, and it was originally Tommy's Slalom Shop. Correct. And also a surf shop, correct?
(01:03):
Well, I'll back up just a little bit. I got my first ski, I think, in 63 or 64.
Herbo Bryan was my brother-in-law.
And, you know, we'd always been around the water, but mostly fishing and playing.
And I wanted to slalom ski.
And lo and behold, I got this incredible wood masterpiece from him and started
(01:25):
going to Great Vine Lake with my friend Larry Glover and started solemn skiing and just loved it.
Well, I sold two or three back then. You know, Buddy had seen me.
Well, hey, can you get me one of those? And then years.
This is about 1963, 64, back in that period.
So, you know, back when the Flintstones were boating. We hit another houseboat.
(01:48):
Okay, what happened? That landlubber tried to make a stop and turn when I'm sticking his hand.
And anyway, later on, I remember my sister telling me that, you know,
she made about $65,000 one year out of the garage.
And I'm thinking, man, I'm a guitar player.
I make $50 a night. This sounds pretty good. I think I'm going to order some
(02:13):
skis because Herb had just started HO.
He had sold O'Brien and I got a ski and I went down to Sloan's Lake,
and I sold it in about an hour and 10 minutes, and I made 50 bucks.
I got fed, I got to ski behind their boat, and I met a couple of real nice girls.
So I'm thinking, man, so I ordered another one, right?
And I went to Stanley Lake, and believe it or not, my second customer was Leif
(02:39):
Swenson, who ended up being the Malibu dealer and then the Mastercraft dealer
later in years, and I'll just leave it to you.
That. So that was kind of the beginning of Denver.
And then I think in two years, I was just about his largest dealer out of my house.
You know, I'm getting UPS trucks and I'm going to the lake and delivering them.
(03:01):
And I think I was two years into this and I made a decision.
I said, man, if I could do 5,000 bucks at the boat show, I'm going to rent me
a space and give this a try. Well, I feel like this is 81, 81. Yeah.
Or 80. No, maybe 83 by now. 83 by now.
I've been doing quite a bit of business out of the garage and they moved me
(03:27):
behind the taffy booth that the sport boat and travel show that was really a
pretty rough show back then.
All to say that, I got moved up to the aisles.
And lo and behold, I do $18,000 worth of business.
I got a new clutch. I got new tires.
I think I got insurance for my truck. I got all the stuff you couldn't get at 50 bucks a pop.
(03:52):
And so I got, and the address was 2520 North Sheridan Boulevard,
right around the corner from Sloan's Lake.
Well, a year goes by and the guy next door moves out. So we punched the wall out.
The next guy moves out, I punch another wall out.
And then I rent the upper end of the building.
And, you know, it's just mad chaos there. And I sold a couple of ski centurions
(04:16):
out of there. I knew those guys.
And they would sell me one boat at a time, you know, and I'd make like 400 bucks
on it. Boy, that's a lot of money back then.
And I said, I got to find a bigger place. I think I'm going to try boats.
And another miracle happened. Norm Speak, who I'd got to know,
he was the Mastercraft rep.
(04:36):
And he had a pretty good reputation.
And Herb always told me, he says, hey, you need to get to know Norm.
And he'll be a good mentor. So I got to know Norm and I just started following him around.
And he kind of adopted me as his other son.
He had a fabulous son, Steve, and daughter or Trudy that were amazing skiers.
(04:57):
Well, I was a complete idiot. You know, he had to teach me everything.
He had to teach me how to work on the boats and how to back them in right and
how to, you know, how to drive a straight line in the slalom course.
And I had a lot of that help. Well, Norm, one day he says, hey,
what do you think about being the Mastercraft dealer?
And I'll just, you know, I'll work for you and I'll sell the boats and everything.
(05:17):
And I said, wow. Wow. So this is summer of 1985.
We fly to Knoxville for the big Mastercraft meeting.
And I mean, everybody in the world there, every world champion skied for Mastercraft.
And at the time they had nothing.
Every world record behind this particular boat. Was it the, so these would be
(05:39):
the years of the Stars and Stripes?
Well, it was the year they transitioned out of the Stars and Stripes to the Swirl.
I'll never forget when they pulled that velvet, you know, cover off the boat.
Everybody went, what's this, you know? And they added a tri-star boat to it
too, you know, which is 18 feet closed bow, but it was wide and supposed to
(05:59):
go for the recreational market.
It wasn't received real well, but, you know, I bought one.
And I bought one Pro Star, and I was off and running again.
And we sold off of that, and I sold primarily to tournament skiers.
And up the street, there was a place called Coy's Wheel and Tire that was the perfect location.
(06:21):
I mean, they had a building, they had a fenced yard, they had everything there.
It was a mess, but I— It was Sheridan and Denver. Yeah, up there at 3740 North
Sheridan, right up the street.
So I went up there and I inquired. No, we don't want to sell it.
No, no, no, we don't want to rent it. We don't want, no, no, no, no, no.
Well, a year later, they come to me begging me. And I said, well,
(06:43):
I don't really have very much money. What do you guys want?
And they gave me a ridiculously good price, way better than I had offered them
before, by about 75 grand better, and said they'd carry the notes.
So, man, I'm in like Flynn.
They're carrying the note because my credit was Zip being a guitar player.
And I got that place and I got a bunch of guys.
(07:05):
There was this guy, J.D. Franek. Him and his dad and family went in there after
hours because we didn't have any permits.
And we just, you know, blocked out the windows and everything and pretended we were cleaning up.
Well, they redid the electrical, you know, and I got a bathroom put in all this stuff without permits.
So back when you could get away with those guys.
(07:25):
Never get away with it now. But anyway, that started growing.
And, you know, I have one cool part of this I should probably say is in 83,
I went to the Chicago Boat Show.
And, I mean, I didn't know anybody, man. I mean, you know, I was lost there.
But I'm walking around like a complete idiot.
(07:46):
And I'm pretty good at that. And I see this surf ski thing.
They had three of them. And they had brought this thing over from Australia.
And I said, man, I think that's pretty cool, you know.
And at the end of the show, I went in there and they still had three of them left.
I said, you know what, I'll buy two of those. And they shipped them to me and
(08:07):
I took them to Sloan's Lake.
And this guy, Dave Roberts, was the only guy that could get up on one.
And I sold him one and I kept the other one. Well, the next year I went back
to Chicago and Tony Finn was there with Surfer, Scurfer.
So I immediately jumped on it, you know, and out of the blue,
I was immediately the largest Scurfer dealer ever.
(08:30):
And the world. So this is, you know, for the listeners who maybe are new to
boating and different things, we'll talk about it in a minute.
Kind of the transition from water ski to wakeboard to now surfing.
Skirfer essentially was the first wakeboard. But if I remember right,
I was still very young at this point.
Skirfer, originally the idea was kind of to surf the wake behind the boat.
(08:55):
Yes. But then you guys started jumping week to week and started breaking a bunch
of boards. And tell us more about that.
Yeah, so that was the idea. Everybody wanted to surf behind the boat.
I mean, we tried it in 1964 at Great
Vine Lake because I had a nine-foot surfboard. And we went out there.
(09:16):
And I remember because the wax melted all over my buddy's boat.
And I was panicking because his dad didn't like me anyway. way.
So anyway, that's kind of how everybody wanted to surf.
So we started sitting on the scurfers and you couldn't do a lot on these things.
I mean, they were really hard to get up on and I demoed them and anybody that
(09:38):
wasn't really a good water person, waterman, they couldn't get up on it.
So it was starting to nosedive.
Well, in this process, I met Jimmy Redmond and I met him from a dealer in Texas
that knew him. He said, hey, this guy's got a way better board.
Once you call him and I called Jimmy up and I became a second dealer,
(09:59):
you know, and I ordered two.
I mean, I stepped up to the plate. I took that thing to Stanley Lake and this
guy, Butch Bendell, this hot shot snowboarder dude, he's a wild guy, man.
I mean, this guy, Bill jumps and jump really irresponsibly 100 feet in the air and things.
(10:19):
So he takes this thing out, and he immediately just rips this thing.
He's catching these whole errors and everything, but he puts his foot right through it.
Well, I didn't even— This is on Redmond's board? Yes. Or this is on the Skirfer's
board? This is Jimmy Redmond's new board.
But anyway, Jimmy says, I've got all this fixed and everything.
So I said, you know what? Once you come to the Denver Boat Show,
(10:41):
and I put Tony Finn on one end of the booth, and Jimmy Redmond on the other
because I was afraid they were going to kill each other because they're total
opposites. Jimmy is molecular structure of the sun.
And Tony is, you know, Tony is a salesman. We'll just keep it at that.
For the newer boaters, there are still many wakeboards, probably more from Liquid
(11:02):
Force at this point, that will still on the bottom of a wakeboard,
it'll say a Redmond design.
There's still many. I've got to verify that. I'm pretty sure many of them are
still designed by Jimmy.
Oh, Jimmy. Jimmy's still active, and he's an amazing human being.
And I was, so finally I said, well, I better break the ice with these two dudes.
And I felt like I was at a prize fight. I walked them both to the center of
(11:26):
the booth, said, hey, you guys, you know, Tony, this is Jimmy.
Jimmy, this is Tony. Now, I need you guys to get along, you know.
I know your competitors here. Well, they shook hands, and they walked off and
had lunch, and they were best buddies immediately.
And I'm going, wow, I never expected that. I figured Tony was going to be really
mad at me for bringing another guy into his, you know, his booth.
(11:48):
Anyway, they became buddies, and, you know, you know the story of that.
They did Wake Tech shortly after that.
And of course, Herb, to insert another piece of reality, Herb and I are on the
lift at Beaver Creek riding up snow skiing.
How come those surf skurfers don't sell real well, Tommy? And I said,
(12:09):
because nobody can get up on one.
And Herb goes, well, what if we made one like a ski and it was neutral buoyancy
and anybody could get up on one?
I said, yeah, if you could make one. And he had been making a few sky ski prototypes for Mike Murphy.
So he knew how to make the mold wider. And he went to this place, Beaver Machine.
(12:30):
And at Beaver, they designed the new one. And in this whole process,
you know, Eric Perez got involved.
I'd met him at the first Scurfer Worlds in Hawaii.
And I got on the phone. I said, Herb, I got the guy for you here.
This is the dude you need to know. He shapes, he knows all the shapers in Hawaii,
and he just won the tournament.
(12:51):
He can actually do a backflip on one.
So that's when we got the first compression molded one.
And as soon as I got that board, what's funny is I came to the Pueblo Boat Show.
You know, when it's out here at the state fair, they had to build that ramp,
you know, and you had to get your trailers and boats down there.
And I had a TV about this big that I could plug that that scurfer or not scurfer
(13:17):
tape, but hyperlite tape in.
And I sold like 45 boards.
I mean, to me, I'm making a fortune. Right.
And it just kept growing, Nick. So the thing is, is very few people belong to
a private lake like I'm privileged to own now.
So the slalom thing and competitive water skiing thing was just creeping.
(13:42):
It wasn't really growing at all where this new sport was going out the roof.
No time long, I had a few local tournaments.
I had the first one in 86 at Soda Lakes, which was really cool.
And Bob Jessen actually had the concession there.
We were kind of partners in it. And then the next year, Chuck Blood was awarded it.
(14:06):
But we had some success with those early tournaments.
And I called up Terry Dorner from Water Ski Magazine, one of the promoter guys,
the salespeople that worked for Terry Snow.
And I said, hey, man, you guys ought to think about this and put this on the
water ski tour because this is going to be the next big thing.
And that was probably a mistake. I should have kept that diamond.
(14:29):
But I gave it to them because the next thing I know, they're back in my backyard
wanting to charge me like three grand for a booth.
And I'm going, wait a minute. I gave you guys this idea.
Well, you know, I went over like a lead balloon. And that's how the whole tournament
thing kind of grew into its own.
Just a few days ago, I was gifted a t-shirt.
(14:49):
My friend Kendall Curtis here in town, you see his name on a rematch,
all these commercial buildings.
He brought me a t-shirt from the 1993 Worlds in Dallas.
We had it at Colorado Springs in 92.
And I had the show skiers and we had slalom skiers and we had the 92 worlds
(15:11):
and we had Eric Perez and Scott Harwood and all these guys from Kittering,
of course, Darren Shapiro who came and slayed everybody on it.
And this thing, the whiteboard deal's just going crazy.
All of a sudden you go to the boat show and 20% of the boats there had problems.
It had either pylons, the extended pylon, or the tower on it.
(15:35):
So that was really pretty cool watching all that.
And I remember the last time I went to a show, I saw you there.
I think every boat in the place had a tower on it, right?
I mean, have you seen anything advertised at the show that doesn't have a tower?
Even the pontoon boats nowadays, right? Yeah, everybody's getting in on it.
It's crazy how those things change from there. And again, for the,
(15:57):
you know, viewers who are just getting into the boating world and surf boats
and wake boats, like, you know, we started with those little water ski boats,
the Mastercrafts that are,
you know, really low slung, flat bottom boats designed for the private water.
The smallest wake you could get.
The smallest wake you could get. And the one that made no wake at all was the
Winter. That's the boat everybody wanted, right?
(16:18):
And then you progress, you talk about the Skirfer coming along and that progresses
to Wake Tech and Redman and Finn getting together.
Wakeboard thing comes you get it on the tour and
so when that started and i
don't remember the years maybe that was 92 in spring so
the first time wakeboarding was on the water ski tour well we
(16:39):
didn't have it in 92 93 to
my knowledge the tournament in dallas was
the first time yeah they they had put eric perez
the knee boarders and the white boarders
were doing an exhibition at the
tournament and we had those at it's soda lakes
(16:59):
tournaments when we had the pro tour there that which was
incredible a beautiful venue for it but that got halted because somebody parked
on a cactus and you know it was the end of the world for that but yeah so so
93 is the first time wakeboarding's part of it and at that point in time they're
still being towed behind a A water ski boat.
(17:20):
Water ski boat with no tower and no extended pole.
And I would challenge anybody who's still wakeboards at this point,
go ahead and go hook a rope to the back of your boat on the short pylon,
not on the tower, and go try to do a flip.
Yeah, it takes a lot of skill. A lot of skill, a lot of work.
You've got to be able to spin really fast.
So that's the original tour. Yes. And then the tower comes along.
(17:45):
Right. What do you remember about the tower? I remember that Nautique had the
first one. Nautique had the first one, and everybody kind of panicked. But you know what?
Nautique, you know, they're even better today. I have a lot of respect for that boat company.
They were kind enough to license it to everybody else.
They could have just kept it and buried everybody because nobody,
(18:08):
the pole would do this to the boat.
The tower had four points. The pylon came up first. Yeah.
So we took a ski pylon that was right in front of the direct drive motor.
And then a pylon went on top of that. Right.
And it has straps going all four corners of the boat.
That was the original that got you up and they realized they could flip easier
(18:30):
and wakeboarding was easier.
It's pulling you up when you jump, not pulling you down. The other one would
pull, you know, you're here and the pylon's here.
So this is the beginning. This is when water skiing kind of starts to become
the dinosaur. It's on its way out.
Wakeboarding is climbing fast. Then Nautique does the tower,
the flight control tower, patented as the original one.
(18:53):
And I believe, I don't remember the whole story, but did that not come from
somebody taking an old damaged tuna tower off of an ocean boat?
That's one of the rumors that I've heard.
And that makes a lot of sense because they're in Florida and they had a lot of crossover there.
And that's what I heard. It came off a fishing boat. They said,
hey, this works pretty well.
(19:14):
And when the tower happened, man, that was a beautiful time because all of a
sudden you had wrecks, you had biminis, you had all these things going on the
tower, you had aftermarket towers.
So a guy like me had a whole bunch more stuff to sell to make money on and service.
And the industry is just exploding.
(19:37):
I mean, sometime in there, your dad, the light went on with him.
He said, you know, I can sell motorcycles.
Nobody's really doing this stuff down here in Pueblo. I think I'm going to give it a crack, right?
Yeah, that was more of a, I think dad at that point was in the motorcycle business.
He had an offer to buy the motorcycle business out.
Didn't know if he wanted to or not, but decided to sell. And then I remember
(19:57):
being a young man and my take was always that we'll get dad on this podcast
at one time and get his story.
But I think he could only mow the lawn so many times in the summer.
So he needed something else to do. And that's when boats came along.
The odd thing about that was that we were a boating family. Mm-hmm.
And I can grow up at the lake every weekend. Right. Until we got a boat dealership.
(20:18):
Mm-hmm. And then now you work all the time. We stopped going to the lake.
But yeah, so those towers came along. That takes wakeboarding to the next level.
That takes accessories to the next level.
Now we're pushing in through mid, late 90s, early 2000s. And then tell us about
the rest of the progression.
Tell us where wakeboarding goes. Where does Tommy's go? Well.
(20:39):
You know, another cool story, if you roll the reel back, is we were all,
we had the first contest at Cottonwood Lake up in Brighton.
And I'm trying to figure the exact year on that.
It's back in the 80s. But that's when we formed the World Ski Boarding Association
(20:59):
first. And we used Jimmy Redmond's logo and everything, which became the World
Wakeboarding Association shortly after that.
And the reason it got changed from ski boarding to wakeboarding is Tony Finn
was involved with a company called Kransko.
And they had all the rights and they had, because he was working with them,
(21:22):
they had the rights to that name, ski boarding.
And so what was changed to wakeboarding? Todd Weatherill was the first president
elected, and Pat McElhenney's wife, Stacy.
And they merged with the tour, the WWA and the tour.
So they had a body of guys with some snowboard experience and surf experience,
(21:45):
skate experience, and they came up with the original format.
And that got changed, but all these things were kind of growing together.
And unfortunately for skiing instead
of the water skiers embracing this they got really really nasty and guys like
you and myself i just looked at extra opportunity you know i still did ski tournament
(22:10):
here at the lake we did ski we did wake we did barefoot anything you could do on the water.
Was part of the tournament. We didn't care. It was equal to us.
I love to watch barefooting and participate in it just as much as slalom or wakeboard.
But everything was growing and growing.
And as time went on, you know, all of a sudden the wakes were big enough.
(22:32):
And a few guys started getting some pretty nice surf rides behind the boats.
And I tell you, I think the surfing edition
has really fostered the
growth of the industry because you remember i
mean boats used to be 40 50 60
000 i mean i'm not even going to say what they are now because i don't know
(22:56):
i'm i'm completely out of it but it's a different world i remember you know
i came back to work for dad in 2010 and i remember you know working with bill
campbell for my dad at the time and And, you know, we're selling Moombas and Supras.
And, you know, 2010, you know, the top of the line Supra was $65,000.
(23:16):
And that was everything.
It was everything you can imagine. The nicest tower, the nicest speakers.
Yeah. The heaters, all the bells and whistles.
And I remember, and it didn't take long, but I remember in 2013,
I remember when we broke the $100,000 mark.
And I remember ordering one, like you said, ordering one and going,
how am I going to sell this?
Rob, what if they want it? It's going like, what am I going to do?
(23:38):
Like this is over a hundred thousand and now, you know, certain manufacturers
out there, not Tink, they build that beautiful paradigm. It's here. Yeah.
Paragon, excuse me, gorgeous boat. But it's over three.
I've just seen it. I'm afraid to get up in it, even with my shoes off.
I think they're over four at this point for one of those Paragons.
You've got many boats between the three and four range. Those Supras hanging out between 200 and 300.
(24:05):
Mumbas are 100 to 250.
So it's wild the way that's changed. But surfing has really opened the doors
to that. I remember, you know, us freshwater pirates out here in these big open
lakes, not these private little things that we've got.
You know, we would get up early. Just to get glass.
Just to get glass. You would be out to the water. If you weren't on the water
(24:26):
by 7 a.m., you were way behind.
Yeah. You know, and that's what we would do. And then when the water started
to get choppy, we would surf by enlisting the boat as far over as we could.
Turning slightly into it. Turning slightly into it. It wasn't much of a wakeboard,
but that's what we did when you couldn't wakeboard anymore.
And now wakeboarding is what you do when you get bored with surfing.
(24:48):
Yeah, that's right. Well, you know what, Nick?
Interesting enough is the wakes got bigger and bigger. I had a conversation
with a bunch of pro wakeboarders.
I believe it was about 2014, maybe 15, when the Tommies opened their store just
north of Orlando at that location.
(25:09):
I was down there and I said, guys, how do you train on these monster wakes?
And they said, we don't. It's survival.
We do a lot of stuff on the trampoline and we do all this other work, balance work.
And we go out and we try tricks a few times and some things we can make,
(25:31):
but we build our run on not getting hurt because every one of these guys has
had at every reconstructive surgery you can imagine.
And I think that's a big...
Shift, a paradigm shift is all of a sudden everybody was getting hurt wakeboarding.
Now, a lot of guys got hurt slalom skiing and barefooting, but the amount of
(25:53):
guys that were good, that were blowing out knees and getting hurt,
that was a big paradigm shift because you really don't get hurt surfing.
You got the professionals down in Orlando training on trampolines and just trying not to get hurt.
But on the video, it's so effortless And it looks so smooth that the guys back
home, they want to make a run at it.
(26:15):
No one realizes how hard that is and how much you could damage yourself.
And I think we kind of started to see wakeboarding taper off.
And again, surfing, you don't get hurt, which is great for the whole family.
Mom and dad can do it along with the son and daughter instead of dad buying
a boat so that his son can get a great wakeboard.
(26:35):
Do it on a paddleboard even. In fact, if I have a beginner, I stick them on
a 10-foot paddleboard and I pull them one mile an hour just to build their confidence.
And then it's a smaller paddleboard and then it's a surfboard.
And then all of a sudden, because they've built confidence, we teach them to surf.
But I tell you, another interesting paradigm shift I saw is a lot of the competitive skiers,
(27:01):
you know they would they would ski two maybe
three sets a day and they
were spread out because the slalom ski you have
to be physically warmed up and ready everything
has to be perfect the conditions have to be good the driver the weight of the
boat everything well when they get done they're still at the lake and all of
(27:23):
a sudden guys like t gas they're going out surfing for the rest They're all
out there playing and they got the music on and I always thought, man,
that is so interesting that these guys love it so much.
They'll go do this, but they will not wakeboard.
Six foot four trying to flip on the wakeboard is not always a good outcome.
(27:46):
You know, you big guys are better for big guy sports.
You know, most of the good wakeboarders were my size or a little bit bigger. They're squirts.
Quantified the reason I was never a great weight boarder. Tommy just gave me
permission to be a for the history of everybody that knows me out there.
My size is the reason I wasn't a good weight.
(28:07):
Well, you're in a physics play comes into it. It's just harder to turn this
over and over versus this.
I mean, it's just simple as that. So what do you, so you, what year did you
start Start Tommy's Salve Shop. 81.
81. And what year did you sell it? Sold it in 2012, September 11th. September 11th, 2012.
Yeah. And then tell me about the journey since selling it.
(28:31):
Well, I had some pretty serious health issues, Nick. Most of those are resolved now.
And I'm telling you, the stress is, I bet you know, I bet you go through it
too. It just wore me down because you'd never have a vacation if you're in the boating business.
You pretend you do, but if you leave the store, you're doing this all day and all night, right?
(28:56):
It's, well, how much does he want for the trade? Well, what happened?
You know, he took it out the first time and all this stuff happened or whatever.
And it just wore me down. And I said, you know what?
I got a pretty good piece of property here. I got the lake down in Pueblo.
Man, it's a good time to sell. all, but that process took me five years to find a buyer.
It was extremely difficult. The banks will not loan money on a boat dealership.
(29:25):
You got to find somebody with
pockets. And I learned that the hard way. I had several deals go south.
And every time a deal would go south, it would just crush me.
But finally, the good Lord put Mr.
Borish, Matt Borish, who bought my store and was very kind to me,
honored his work, shook my hand, looking in my eyes. In fact, we met.
(29:47):
I had five people looking at my dealership all the same day.
And when I met him and his father-in-law and a couple other guys he brought
with him. I said, man, that's the guys I want to sell the business to.
We met at the Mexican restaurant on I-70 as they were leaving town.
I got them on the phone and they were at Sheridan. I said, well, get off on Federal.
(30:09):
And I met him up there and we got a napkin and wrote the deal up on the napkin.
And he sent me his letter of intention exactly at 10 o'clock that night honoring his word.
And, you know, I held on and I did consulting for two or three years.
And that was a lot of fun because I got to go to all the grand openings and everything.
And that was pretty cool. But man, I really don't like getting on a lot of airplanes anymore.
(30:34):
So that kind of tapered off. And really, I don't think I have a lot to contribute
anymore to the boating industry.
I think most of my cards are played.
You know, maybe there's a little advice I could give or something,
but I think the good Lord has other things in mind for me and going through
the fire of owning your own business.
(30:58):
Business. It's really hard and really brutal.
But man, when you move through the fire, you become tempered steel because regular steel is brittle.
And I was brittle for a long time, but going through those fires.
And I think the greatest lesson I learned other than trust the Lord was the
(31:18):
ability to have a disaster in your business.
And that become the biggest blessing. Because I firmly believe,
my dad taught me that as a kid, and I didn't believe him as a son.
When something bad like this happens, you got to look on the other side of the door.
And I got to inhabit it instead of saying, Nick, well, why did this happen to
(31:40):
me? And how come I get all the bad breaks?
And why can't these boat manufacturers do this?
And why doesn't so-and-so think this? I started asking, how can I make my dealership
great? What about this disaster can I learn to become better than everybody else in the business?
So all of those disasters in solving those problems prepared me for the last chapter of my life.
(32:04):
And I think the last chapter, which is serving the Lord Jesus Christ, I get emotional.
That's the chapter I'm most excited because it goes on forever.
We're going to jump onto that podcast next, and that will be on the Faith in
the Fast Life podcast. I catch that story.
I want to touch on that note of you talking about being forged in the fire of
(32:25):
what the dealership goes through, the principle of the dealership and those things.
And I think the, the lesson here to the, to the listener is it's just how important
it is to not just the boat that you buy, but the, but.
Dealership you buy from bingo because at
the end of the day these boats are built by humans in the united states
of america and yes they're a premium dollar and when
(32:47):
you spend that much money sure we all wish that they were perfect that there
was never a problem but they're built by humans and they rattle on a trailer
down the road and they get plugged into the water and electronics are near water
and rough waters and rain and wind and whatever else and at the end of the day
sometimes Sometimes things go wrong,
but it's not if it's going to go wrong, it's when it's going to go wrong.
(33:09):
Yeah, it's got to go wrong.
The question is, who's going to take care of you when it does go wrong?
That's a fabulous question. And I think that's the strength of your dealership,
that it was the strength of mine.
I mean, I watched your dad in the motorcycle business.
I watched him look people in the eye and shake their hands.
I watched him make things right. And when you find a dealership like yours that
(33:33):
every single handshake,
the intent is to honor that word and keep that word and give them the experience they deserve.
It is far, far better to buy from somebody like you than finding your boat on some clearing shop.
You know, some guy that bought up somebody's inventory that went bankrupt or whatever.
(33:55):
I mean, I'm sure you get those boats in too. They come in in the shrink wrap.
Hey, I stole this thing at an auction and they
don't realize that it takes three or four hours on every single new boat of
just water testing and fixing and tweaking Every single thing that vibrates
(34:15):
loose whether it's coming from Tennessee or wherever those are long hard trips on on those.
Those semis and,
You know, you go out in Pueblo Reservoir and the wind that we're having today,
you got a real good chance of shaking something loose.
Well, if they can come to your dealership with people that have integrity and
(34:36):
really care, you guys are going to fix it.
You're going to fix it as quick as possible. It's going to be done right.
And you're going to follow up and say, hey, man, have you had it back out to
water? How's that vibration? Did we get it solved?
Great. Well, vibration's solved. But you know, this mirror keeps coming loose.
Hey we'll get you another mirror bracket or whatever the relationship
(34:57):
with your local dealer is worth
the extra 16 bucks it costs you for a boat or whatever you know you really don't
save anything by buying an auction boat right yeah and having a relationship
whether it's us or any other dealership you want a dealer who's going to take
care of you so it's important but Tommy,
(35:18):
I think our time frame here... We're winding down. We're winding down.
We had a great interview with you. I really appreciate you doing it.
Man, what an honor, Nick.
It's been an honor to watch you grow up under your dad's leadership and go through
your challenges. And I'm really proud of you, buddy.
Appreciate it. Thank you so much for being with us today. God bless you,
(35:38):
man. Yeah, thanks, brother.
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